Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

Where? shouts Trevor McCloud, our chief engineer. Everyone turns to look at him. His eyes have turned bubblegum pink; spit glistens at the corners of his mouth. I’ve got two kids in private school, he says, a mortgage, home equity, a car loan. Where? In fucking Kansas? In Milwaukee?

Trevor, I say, trying to lock every joint in my body at once, this is incredibly hard, it’s a disaster, but we’re giving you every minute of advance warning we can. The station won’t be off the air for six weeks. You’ve got skills. You’ve all got portable skills. I won’t say, it could be worse. It couldn’t be worse. Especially for those of you with kids and houses and families and obligations. But we will do everything we can.

Fuck you, he says. I mean, at least Winnie’s from here. You’re just, what, an import? A scab? What’s your job, anyway, in the new scheme of things?

No job. I’m looking for work, just the same as you.

Well, good luck with that, Mort says. Personally, I’d give you the highest possible recommendation.

Mort, that’s not fair, Michelle says. Stop looking for a scapegoat. Or if you are going to look for one, open your eyes, okay? Who do you think made this decision? She turns to me. I mean, it’s a sweet deal for PureLine, right? They’re not putting any cash in up front, are they? For a prime FM license? Just ad revenues? Wow, BCC is such the winner in that scenario.

I don’t know, I say. I’ve told you everything I know.

If you’re fishing for dirt, Winnifred says, you’re not going to get it from us. This was a straightforward strategic decision on the part of the college.

Oh, Mort says, what now, Winnie, you supported this? This is too much. He combs his fingers through his hair, which he wears Bruce Springsteen style, down to the nape of the neck; along with the open-necked shirts, the arrowhead on a thong, and the single gold loop in the left ear, it’s his virility costume, and I won’t hesitate to say that I find it deeply satisfying to see it become clownish and transparently sad. This is just evil , he says, it’s a corporate takeover, a total sellout, and I don’t know why Walter thinks he’s going to get away with it, but he’s not. This meeting is over. I have to go on the air in an hour, and guess what I’m going to talk about? Guess what just happened to your carefully orchestrated PR calendar, Winnie? I can’t wait to hear what the people have to say.

I have packets for everyone, Winnifred says, standing up, as if on cue, and pulling a stack of lavender folders out of her bag. I’ll just put them on the break-room table, and everyone can have a look. Your severance is calibrated to your latest contract. There’s a number for the BCC HR department, but don’t everybody call at once, okay? Read the materials first. And, obviously, the sooner you can prepare a résumé, the sooner your transition can begin.

A crash, outside the newsroom, in the direction of the engineers’ room; everyone jolts out of a collective stupor, and a few run in the direction of the sound, just as Trevor emerges, hugging an enormous outdated computer monitor, trailing cords, like a gigantic tumor, the casualty of some botched surgery, and drops it on the hallway floor. You can take your severance and shove it up your ass! he hollers, at no one in particular. I should have known you people would stab us all in the back.

Easy, man, Mort says. He brushes past me, walking slowly toward Trevor with his palms out, and the tiniest, most imperceptible swagger, as if to say, to us, see? See what you’ve gotten us into? We’re all upset, but come on, man. Let’s not shit the bed, okay? You don’t want to do anything you’ll—

You! Trevor screams, turning purplish, the color of an unripe eggplant. Fucking batshit liberals! We had a word for you when I was growing up, you know that?

Trevor, Mort says. Trevor. You can call me anything you want if it’ll make you feel better. But not here. Let’s go down to Max’s, okay? I’m buying. I’m buying for everyone. All right? Can I buy you a beer? Let me buy you a beer.

Fuck you, hymie, Trevor says. Fuck you, kike. As he says the words, his face contorts, a mangling of grief and horror and self-loathing. He’s my age, after all, or perhaps five years older, perhaps forty; he’s probably never said these words before in his life. Even ancestral rage, I can’t help thinking, comes to us secondhand. Fuck you! He whips around and throws the 200-volt adapter, concealed like a baseball in his enormous right fist, through the soundproof glass of the broadcast booth. It spiderwebs, sags inward, as if stunned, unsure of how to respond, and then collapses, throwing shards across the monitors and desks and soundboards.

Enough! Winnifred shouts, phone pressed to her ear. I’ve called the police! Someone behind me is sobbing. I look around at an empty room: everyone has taken cover behind a desk, or rushed into my office, or out into the lobby. He could have had a gun, they’ll say later, interviewed on the Fox ten-o’clock news. It was like one of those postal-worker situations. Police sirens are howling outside, all the office phones ringing at once, the emergency band squawking under its blanket of broken glass. But Trevor is already finished; he’s sitting on the floor, cross-legged, like a child in kindergarten, and Mort is kneeling in front of him, holding his hands.

In a cloud of meaty smoke, whooshed away by an enormous ventilation hood, Robin Wilkinson lifts a rack of skewers out of the oven and delicately rotates each one, turning the blackened side up, the raw pink side down, adding sea salt and cracked pink peppercorns from a bowl. When she bends over the counter the front of her dress droops a little too low, revealing the top of a salmon camisole, and she flattens it, demurely, with one hand.

We have a pretty nice grill, she tells me. It came with the house, actually, and so I got really into cooking outside. Not just hamburgers, you know, rotisserie, churrascaria , pretty ambitious stuff. And then we got this stove, and I realized we can more or less do all the same things inside. Even more, in fact. I can make shawarma , if I want. The kids love it. But it has to cook for at least six hours, and the heat’s so high you don’t want to leave it on by itself. It’s not like a pot simmering on the stove. These kebabs are so much simpler, though you do have to check them. The biggest mistake most people make is putting meat and vegetables on the same skewer. Why would you do that? I’ve never understood it. Stick a cherry tomato on there and it’ll be, just, carbon . Okay, that’s it. End of lecture. As you can see, when I meet new people, I get nervous. I talk too much.

She slides the rack back in, wipes her hands, and takes a generous sip from her glass. We’re drinking a Chilean rosé, Montes Cherub, which sounds like it means swill , she said earlier, but actually it’s quite good, all Syrah, very dry, really good to start things off.

No, I mean, I say, it’s an awkward situation, I guess. Initially. I’m not just any guest. You have to feel that you’re a little on display.

Don’t you get that all the time, with your subjects?

This is kind of a new line of work for me, actually, I say. Martin may have told you. My background’s mostly in public radio—

Right. WBCC. That’s a sad story, isn’t it? Sad, but typical of this town. No one thinks big here. No one wants to innovate . A station like that, it was a resource, and what do we do but sell our resources away?

In the living room, across the kitchen island and down three steps, Sherry and Tamika are playing a tennis video game, bounding across the floor with little white wands in hand. On your toes , Martin is saying. See what Venus does? Constantly up on her toes. Your heels never hit the ground. Always ahead of the next shot.